Orca abandons dead calf after 17-day vigil

The Center for Whale Research said the killer whale, known as J35, was spotted off the western coast of San Juan Island, Wash., without her baby while she chased a school of salmon with her podmates for about a kilometre.

J35's calf died shortly after birth on July 24.

"Her tour of grief is now over and her behaviour is remarkably frisky", explain scientists from the Centre for Whale Research, who monitor and study an endangered orca population called the Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW) in the Pacific Northwest.

"The ordeal of J35 carrying her dead calf for at least seventeen days and [1600km] is now over, thank goodness", researcher Ken Balcomb said on Twitter.

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In this photo, taken Saturday and released by the Center for Whale Research, an orca known as J-35, foreground, swims with podmates near Friday Harbor, Alaska. The female calf died after a few hours. NPR's Colin Dwyer previously reported that "given the fact that orcas move in matrilineal groups, dependent on mothers and grandmothers", Tahlequah's death would put her adult son and others in danger.

"She literally is pushing her baby to connect with it and, hope against hope - hoping that it will take a breath, which it will never do", biologist and wildlife conservationist Jeff Corwin told CBSN last week. "And on Thursday she was still seen pushing her baby to the water's surface". The world's interest in her feat finally grew to encompass her whole family.

The CWR added that the baby's carcass has probably sunk to the bottom of the Salish Sea, meaning that researchers may not get a chance to examine it. According to NPR's Dwyer, the population of Southern Resident killer whales has decreased by about a quarter in the past 20 years, largely because their food source, the Chinook salmon, has also seen a dramatic population decline.

Both Canada and the United States list the Southern Resident killer whale as endangered. The last successful birth was three years ago. They anxious that the effort of pushing her calf - for about 1,000 miles - would make Tahlequah weak and keep her from finding enough food.

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